Guantanamo inmates complain of not being given drinking water and having to cope with extremely low temperatures, their lawyers have said. As the Gitmo hunger strike enters its 51st day, the White House has made its first comment on the protest.

Guantanamo detainees who have been refusing food for weeks now
complain of being denied drinking water, according to Yemeni
prisoner Musaab al-Madhwani, who spoke with his attorney by phone
on Monday. He also claimed that temperatures at the camp were being
kept extremely low.

Following the call, a group of human rights lawyers filed an
emergency motion with a federal court in Washington, describing the
alleged mistreatment: “The reality is that these men are slowly
withering away and we as a country need to take immediate
action,” Denver-based human rights lawyer Mari Newman said,
according to AP.

The allegations of mistreatment were denied by the prison’s
spokesperson, Navy Capt. Robert Durand, who said the inmates were
getting “the same water I make my coffee with and that they make
lunch with.”

While this motion has not yet received a response from the U.S.
government, the White House has finally broken its silence over the
seven-week-long hunger strike at Gitmo. “I can tell you that the
White House and the president’s team is closely monitoring the
hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay,” President Obama’s
spokesperson Joshua Earnest said, according to AFP. “I can tell
you that the administration remains committed to closing the
detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.”

President Obama vowed to close down Guantanamo at the beginning
of his first term in office in 2009; he was blocked from fulfilling
that promise by legislation passed by the US Congress.

Speaking to RT, former US Assistant Secretary of State for
Public Affairs under Barack Obama, P.J. Crowley, explained that
Obama’s hands have been tied by lawmakers, who put a ban on
transferring detainees to the mainland US. “It clearly is the
United States Congress that's basically frozen the situation in
place,” Crowley said.

The legal deadlock Gitmo inmates find themselves victims of is
seen as major reason behind their hunger strike. The official
number of protesters has recently grown to 31, with at least 10 being force-fed and 3
hospitalized. Lawyers of the detainees keep on insisting officials
are underreporting the scale of the hunger strike. They claim more
than a hundred of Guantanamo prisoners have been refusing food
since early February, with some putting their health at
considerable risk.

“I’ve never seen him thinner in all of my five years of
coming to Guantanamo Bay… I mean, he’s forgetful and he’s in a bad
physical condition. He’s hard to focus, he complains of headaches,
he’s weak. He went from 147 pounds down to 107 pounds,” Wingard
said.

Fears for the health and safety of the prisoners on hunger
strike have prompted the Red Cross to send a delegation to inspect
the facility earlier than planned.

While the organization has a policy of not publicly commenting
on such visits, in an interview with RT the spokesperson for
the International Committee of the Red Cross in North America,
Simon Schorno, gave his opinion on the general situation at
Gitmo.

“What I can tell you is that from our observations those
tensions and this anguish that the detainees are experiencing are
clearly related to the lack of a clear legal framework in
Guantanamo. This has now been having a real impact for detainees
for some time – on their mental health, on their emotional
health,” he explained.

Guantanamo’s biggest-in-years hunger strike started on February
6, and was reportedly caused by mistreatment on the part of the
guards, including searches, confiscation of personal items and the
desecration of Korans.